1. Technical Field
One or more embodiments relate generally to remitting funds. More specifically, one or more embodiments relate to system and methods of improving the safety, ease, and convenience of electronically remitting funds.
2. Background and Relevant Art
A remittance is typically a money transfer sent from a user to one or more individuals in another country. Remittances generally play a large role in the economies of developing countries where families are dependent on money sent from relatives who work in more affluent parts of the world. For example, an emigrant working in the United States may send money to his home country every week in order for his parents to be able to pay their bills. According to some estimates, in recent years, remittances have brought hundreds of billions of dollars to developing countries.
In order to send a remittance, a sender typically utilizes a money transfer service, such as Western Union® or MoneyGram®. Remitting funds with these types of money transfer services generally requires multiple communications back and forth between the sender and the recipient in order to determine the remittance amount, the delivery time and date, as well as the pickup location. Organizing these details may be time consuming and cumbersome when the sender and recipient are attempting to communicate across multiple countries and time zones. Additionally, money transfer services generally charge large transfer fees, which add an extra burden to the remittance process.
Users can also remit funds via a bank-to-bank transfer, where funds are transmitted from one person's bank account to another person's bank account. Remitting funds in a bank-to-bank transfer, however, is also often problematic. For example, a sender in the United States may have a bank account with a large national bank. U.S. banks, however, generally have a limited number of branches outside of the U.S. A large U.S. bank may have a branch in a large city of another country, but it is uncommon that even the most popular U.S. bank will have a branch in the rural parts of a developing country. Thus, in order to facilitate a bank-to-bank transfer, the sender generally must organize account and routing numbers across two different banking systems. This process is typically, expensive, cumbersome, and error-prone. Furthermore, depending upon the infrastructure of the developing country, there may not be any banks available to receive a wire transfer.
In addition to the foregoing, identity theft is an increasing problem with regard to money remittances. For example, a sender may receive a remittance request via a phone call or email to remit funds to a person in another country. The sender, however, may have little assurance that the person making the request is not a fraud. This may be especially true for remittances transferred to developing countries where crime rates tend to be high. A thief may trick a sender into remitting funds and obtain fake identification in order to pick up remitted funds that were intended for someone else.
Thus, there are several disadvantages to current methods for electronically remitting funds.